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Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk.

Meanings

There are two slightly different meanings of safety. For example, home safety may indicate a building's ability to protect against external harm events (such as weather, home invasion, etc.), or may indicate that its internal installations (such as appliances, stairs, etc.) are safe (not dangerous or harmful) for its inhabitants.

Discussions of safety often include mention of related terms. Security is such a term. With time the definitions between these two have often become interchanged, equated, and frequently appear juxtaposed in the same sentence. Readers are left to conclude whether they comprise a redundancy. This confuses the uniqueness that should be reserved for each by itself. When seen as unique, as we intend here, each term will assume its rightful place in influencing and being influenced by the other.

Safety is the condition of a “steady state” of an organization or place doing what it is supposed to do. “What it is supposed to do” is defined in terms of public codes and standards, associated architectural and engineering designs, corporate vision and mission statements, and operational plans and personnel policies. For any organization, place, or function, large or small, safety is a normative concept. It complies with situation-specific definitions of what is expected and acceptable.

Using this definition, protection from a home's external threats and protection from its internal structural and equipment failures (see Meanings, above) are not two types of safety but rather two aspects of a home's steady state.

In the world of everyday affairs, not all goes as planned. Some entity's steady state is challenged. This is where security science, which is of more recent date, enters. Drawing from the definition of safety, then:

Security is the process or means, physical or human, of delaying, preventing, and otherwise protecting against external or internal, defects, dangers, loss, criminals, and other individuals or actions that threaten, hinder or destroy an organization’s “steady state,” and deprive it of its intended purpose for being.

Using this generic definition of safety it is possible to specify the elements of a security program.

Limitations

Safety can be limited in relation to some guarantee or a standard of insurance to the quality and unharmful function of an object or organization. It is used in order to ensure that the object or organization will do only what it is meant to do.

It is important to realize that safety is relative. Eliminating all risk, if even possible, would be extremely difficult and very expensive. A safe situation is one where risks of injury or property damage are low and manageable.

When something is called safe, this usually means that it is safe within certain reasonable limits and parameters. For example, a medication may be safe, for most people, under most circumstances, if taken in a certain amount.

A choice motivated by safety may have other, unsafe consequences. For example, frail elderly people are sometimes moved out of their homes and into hospitals or skilled nursing homes with the claim that this will improve the person's safety. The safety provided is that daily medications will be supervised, the person will not need to engage in some potentially risky activities such as climbing stairs or cooking, and if the person falls down, someone there will be able to help the person get back up. However, the end result might be decidedly unsafe, including the dangers of transfer trauma, hospital delirium, elder abuse, hospital-acquired infections, depression, anxiety, and even a desire to die.

Types

There is a distinction between products that meet standards, that are safe, and that merely feel safe. The highway safety community uses these terms:

Normative

Normative safety is achieved when a product or design meets applicable standards and practices for design and construction or manufacture, regardless of the product's actual safety history.

Substantive

Substantive or objective safety occurs when the real-world safety history is favorable, whether or not standards are met.

Perceived

Perceived or subjective safety refers to the users' level of comfort and perception of risk, without consideration of standards or safety history. For example, traffic signals are perceived as safe, yet under some circumstances, they can increase traffic crashes at an intersection. Traffic roundabouts have a generally favorable safety record yet often make drivers nervous.

Low perceived safety can have costs. For example, after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, many people chose to drive rather than fly, despite the fact that, even counting terrorist attacks, flying is safer than driving. Perceived risk discourages people from walking and bicycling for transportation, enjoyment or exercise, even though the health benefits outweigh the risk of injury.

Security

Also called social safety or public safety, security addresses the risk of harm due to intentional criminal acts such as assault, burglary or vandalism.

Because of the moral issues involved, security is of higher importance to many people than substantive safety. For example, a death due to murder is considered worse than a death in a car crash, even though in many countries, traffic deaths are more common than homicides.

Risks and responses

Safety is generally interpreted as implying a real and significant impact on risk of death, injury or damage to property. In response to perceived risks many interventions may be proposed with engineering responses and regulation being two of the most common.

Probably the most common individual response to perceived safety issues is insurance, which compensates for or provides restitution in the case of damage or loss.

Safety Management

Safety Management is the set of principles, framework, processes and measures to prevent accidents, injuries, disorders and death that may be caused by using a service or a product.

System safety and reliability engineering

System safety and reliability engineering is an engineering discipline. Continuous changes in technology, environmental regulation and public safety concerns make the analysis of complex safety-critical systems more and more demanding.

A common fallacy, for example among electrical engineers regarding structure power systems, is that safety issues can be readily deduced. In fact, safety issues have been discovered one by one, over more than a century in the case mentioned, in the work of many thousands of practitioners, and cannot be deduced by a single individual over a few decades. A knowledge of the literature, the standards and custom in a field is a critical part of safety engineering. A combination of theory and track record of practices is involved, and track record indicates some of the areas of theory that are relevant. (In the US, persons with a state license in Professional Engineering in Electrical Engineering are expected to be competent in this regard, the foregoing notwithstanding, but most electrical engineers have no need of the license for their work.)

Safety is often seen as one of a group of related disciplines: quality, reliability, availability, maintainability and safety. (Availability is sometimes not mentioned, on the principle that it is a simple function of reliability and maintainability.) These issues tend to determine the value of any work, and deficits in any of these areas are considered to result in a cost, beyond the cost of addressing the area in the first place; good management is then expected to minimize total cost.

Process Safety

Process safety is an interdisciplinary engineering domain focusing on the study, prevention, and management of large-scale fires, explosions and chemical accidents (such as toxic gas clouds) in process plants or other facilities dealing with hazardous materials, such as refineries and oil and gas (onshore and offshore) production installations. Thus, process safety is generally concerned with the prevention of, control of, mitigation of and recovery from unintentional hazardous materials releases that can have a serious effect to people (onsite and offsite), plant and/or the environment.

Risk Management

Safety practices

Safety practices or measures are activities and precautions taken to improve safety, i.e. reduce risk related to human health. Common safety measures include:

• Chemical analysis
• Destructive testing of samples
• Drug testing of employees, etc.
• Examination of activities by specialists to minimize physical stress or increase productivity
• Geological surveys to determine whether land or water sources are polluted, how firm the ground is at a potential building site, etc.
• Government regulation so suppliers know what standards their product is expected to meet.
• Industry regulation so suppliers know what level of quality is expected. Industry regulation is often imposed to avoid potential government regulation.
• Instruction manuals explaining how to use a product or perform an activity
• Instructional videos demonstrating proper use of products
• Root cause analysis to identify causes of a system failure and correct deficiencies.
• Internet safety or Online Safety, is protection of the user's safety from cyber threats or computer crime in general.
• Periodic evaluations of employees, departments, etc.
• Physical examinations to determine whether a person has a physical condition that would create a problem.
• Process safety management is an analytical tool focused on preventing releases of highly hazardous chemicals.
• Safety margins/Safety factors. For instance, a product rated to never be required to handle more than 200 pounds might be designed to fail under at least 400 pounds, a safety factor of two. Higher numbers are used in more sensitive applications such as medical or transit safety.
• Self-imposed regulation of various types.
• Implementation of standard protocols and procedures so that activities are conducted in a known way.
• Statements of ethics by industry organizations or an individual company so its employees know what is expected of them.
• Stress testing subjects a person or product to stresses in excess of those the person or product is designed to handle, to determining the "breaking point".
• Training of employees, vendors, product users
• Visual examination for dangerous situations such as emergency exits blocked because they are being used as storage areas.
• Visual examination for flaws such as cracks, peeling, loose connections.
• X-ray analysis to see inside a sealed object such as a weld, a cement wall or an airplane outer skin.

Occupational Safety and Health

Occupational safety and health is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at work in all industries such as construction, agriculture, service, mining and gas extraction and health care.

Occupational Hygiene

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Occupational hazards
Physical Chemical Biological Psychosocial
Hierarchy of hazard controls
Elimination Substitution Engineering controls Administrative controls Personal protective equipment
Occupational hygiene
Occupational exposure limit Exposure assessment Workplace exposure monitoring
Study
Occupational toxicology Occupational epidemiology Workplace health surveillance
See also
Aerosol NIOSH ratings Source control COVID-19 controls Fire fighter fatality investigation
v t e

Occupational hygiene or industrial hygiene (IH) is the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, control, and confirmation (ARECC) of protection from risks associated with exposures to hazards in, or arising from, the workplace that may result in injury, illness, impairment, or affect the well-being of workers and members of the community. These hazards or stressors are typically divided into the categories biological, chemical, physical, ergonomic and psychosocial. The risk of a health effect from a given stressor is a function of the hazard multiplied by the exposure to the individual or group. For chemicals, the hazard can be understood by the dose response profile most often based on toxicological studies or models. Occupational hygienists work closely with toxicologists (see Toxicology) for understanding chemical hazards, physicists (see Physics) for physical hazards, and physicians and microbiologists for biological hazards (see Microbiology, Tropical medicine, Infection). Environmental and occupational hygienists are considered experts in exposure science and exposure risk management. Depending on an individual's type of job, a hygienist will apply their exposure science expertise for the protection of workers, consumers and/or communities.

Food Safety

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Food safety (or food hygiene) is used as a scientific method/discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness. The occurrence of two or more cases of a similar illness resulting from the ingestion of a common food is known as a food-borne disease outbreak. This includes a number of routines that should be followed to avoid potential health hazards. In this way, food safety often overlaps with food defense to prevent harm to consumers. The tracks within this line of thought are safety between industry and the market and then between the market and the consumer. In considering industry-to-market practices, food safety considerations include the origins of food including the practices relating to food labeling, food hygiene, food additives and pesticide residues, as well as policies on biotechnology and food and guidelines for the management of governmental import and export inspection and certification systems for foods. In considering market-to-consumer practices, the usual thought is that food ought to be safe in the market and the concern is safe delivery and preparation of the food for the consumer. Food safety, nutrition and food security are closely related. Unhealthy food creates a cycle of disease and malnutrition that affects infants and adults as well.

Food can transmit pathogens, which can result in the illness or death of the person or other animals. The main types of pathogens are bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungus. The WHO Foodborne Disease Epidemiology Reference Group conducted the only study that solely and comprehensively focused on the global health burden of foodborne diseases. This study, which involved the work of over 60 experts for a decade, is the most comprehensive guide to the health burden of foodborne diseases. The first part of the study revealed that 31 foodborne hazards considered priority accounted for roughly 420,000 deaths in LMIC and posed a burden of about 33 million disability adjusted life years in 2010. Food can also serve as a growth and reproductive medium for pathogens. In developed countries there are intricate standards for food preparation, whereas in lesser developed countries there are fewer standards and less enforcement of those standards. Even so, in the US, in 1999, 5,000 deaths per year were related to foodborne pathogens. Another main issue is simply the availability of adequate safe water, which is usually a critical item in the spreading of diseases. In theory, food poisoning is 100% preventable. However this cannot be achieved due to the number of persons involved in the supply chain, as well as the fact that pathogens can be introduced into foods no matter how many precautions are taken.

Occupational Medicine

Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM), previously called industrial medicine, is a board certified medical specialty under the American Board of Preventative Medicine that specializes in the prevention and treatment of work-related illnesses and injuries.

OEM physicians are trained in both clinical medicine and public health. They may work in a clinical capacity providing direct patient care to workers through worker's compensation programs or employee health programs and performing medical screening services for employers. Corporate medical directors are typically occupational medicine physicians who often have specialized training in the hazards relevant to their industry. OEM physicians are employed by the US military in light of the significant and unique exposures faced by this population of workers. Public health departments, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) commonly employ physicians specialized in occupational medicine. They often advise international bodies, governmental and state agencies, organizations, and trade unions.

The specialty of Occupational Medicine rose in prominence following the industrial revolution. Factory workers and laborers in a broad host of emergent industries at the time were becoming profoundly ill and often dying due to work exposures which prompted formal efforts to better understand, recognize, treat and prevent occupational injury and disease.

More recently occupational medicine gained visibility during the COVID-19 Pandemic as spread of the illness was intricately linked to the workplace necessitating dramatic adjustments in workplace health, safety and surveillance practices.

In the United States, the American College of Preventive Medicine oversees board certification of physicians in Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Standards organizations

A number of standards organizations exist that promulgate safety standards. These may be voluntary organizations or government agencies. These agencies first define the safety standards, which they publish in the form of codes. They are also Accreditation Bodies and entitle independent third parties such as testing and certification agencies to inspect and ensure compliance to the standards they defined. For instance, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) formulated a certain number of safety standards in its Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) and accredited TÜV Rheinland to provide certification services to guarantee product compliance to the defined safety regulations.

United States

American National Standards Institute

A major American standards organization is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Usually, members of a particular industry will voluntarily form a committee to study safety issues and propose standards. Those standards are then recommended to ANSI, which reviews and adopts them. Many government regulations require that products sold or used must comply with a particular ANSI standard.

Government agencies

Many government agencies set safety standards for matters under their jurisdiction, such as:

• the Food and Drug Administration
• the Consumer Product Safety Commission
• the United States Environmental Protection Agency

Testing laboratories

Product safety testing, for the United States, is largely controlled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In addition, workplace related products come under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which certifies independent testing companies as Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories (NRTL), see.

European Union

Institutions

• the European Commission (EC)
• the European Committee for Standardization (CEN)
• the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)
• the European Safety Federation (ESF)

Testing laboratories

The European Commission provides the legal framework, but the different Member States may authorize test laboratories to carry out safety testing.

Other countries

Standards institutions

• British Standards Institution
• Canadian Standards Association
• Deutsches Institut für Normung
• International Organization for Standardization
• Standards Australia

Testing laboratories

Many countries have national organizations that have accreditation to test and/or submit test reports for safety certification. These are typically referred to as a Notified or Competent Body.

See also

• Accident – Unforeseen event, often with a negative outcome
• Aircraft – Vehicle or machine that is able to fly by gaining support from the air
  • Aviation safety – State in which risks associated with aviation are at an acceptable level
  • Aviation accidents and incidents – Accidental aviation occurences
• Aisles: Safety and regulatory considerations – Architectural element
• American Society of Safety Professionals – Professional organization
• Arc flash – Heat and light produced during an electrical arc fault
• Safety in Australia
• Automobile – Motorised passenger road vehicle
  • Traffic collision – Incident when a vehicle collides with another object
  • Automotive safety – Study and practice to minimize the occurrence and consequences of motor vehicle accidents
  • Road traffic safety – Methods and measures for reducing the risk of death and injury on roads
• Bicycle safety – Safety practices to reduce risk associated with cycling
• Behavior-based safety – System used in industry to reduce exposure to hazards
• Boat – Vessel for transport by water
  • Boating – Leisure activity involving boats
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – United States government public health agency CDC
• Certified safety professional – Qualified safety personnel
• Child – Human between birth and puberty
  • Child safety seat – Seat designed to protect children during traffic collisions
  • Toy safety – Practice of ensuring that toys meet safety standards
  • Poison control center – Over-the-phone medical service
  • Safe Kids Worldwide – Global non-profit organization working to prevent childhood injury
• Consumer product safety – Request to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects
• Door#Door-related accidents – Movable barrier that allows ingress and egress
• Electrical safety testing – Testing to ensure the compliance of electrical systems with safety standards
• Explosives safety – Safety practices related to explosives
• Fire safety – Practices to reduce the results of fire
• Gun safety – Study and practice of safe operation of firearms
• Lists of rail accidents
• Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents
• Motorcycle safety – Study of the risks and dangers of motorcycling
• Patient safety – Prevention, reduction, reporting, and analysis of medical error
• Pedestrian safety – Methods and measures for reducing the risk of death and injury on roadsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Security company – Type of company
• Risk management – Identification, evaluation and control of risks
• Sailing ship accidents – Naval mishaps
• Safety engineering – Engineering discipline which assures that engineered systems provide acceptable levels of safety
  • Fail-safe – Design feature or practice
  • Poka-yoke – Process that helps an equipment operator avoid mistakes
  • Software system safety
• Safety statement – Document that outlines how a company manages their health and safety
• Security – Degree of resistance to, or protection from, harm
• Seismic analysis – Study of the response of buildings and structures to earthquakes
• Sports injury – Physical and emotional trauma safety
• Occupational safety and health – Field concerned with the safety, health and welfare of people at work
  • Criticality accident – Uncontrolled nuclear fission chain reaction
  • Safety data sheet – Sheet listing work-related hazards of a product or substance
  • Personal protective equipment – Equipment designed to help protect an individual from hazards
  • Work accident – Occurrence during work that leads to physical or mental harm

References

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Further reading

• Wildavsky, Aaron; Wildavsky, Adam (2008). "Risk and Safety". In David R. Henderson (ed.). Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (2nd ed.). Indianapolis: Library of Economics and Liberty. ISBN 978-0865976658. OCLC 237794267.

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